Mastering The Master: A Holmesian in the Crossfire Between Scholarship and Screeds

Questions of place and role dance prominently in my mind with aggressive repetition as a first-year PhD student. In a time where anyone with access to the internet and to a computer can start a blog and publish daily think pieces, why am I striving to join an academic community that traditionally values publishing in niche, socially invisible journals? If one of my primary objectives as a scholar-researcher is to offer meaningful analyses to the widest possible audience, I have a responsibility to make my work accessible, in terms of medium and in terms of readability.

In an article titled, “Erasing the Pop-Culture Scholar, One Click at a Time” on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s website, Amanda Ann Klein and Kristen Warner argue, “What pains us more than the absent citation [of a professional academic’s work] is the unsupported claim, the anachronistic parallel, the apocryphal anecdote.” They assert that writers, and specifically pop-culture and media journalists, should be reaching out to scholars to help augment their work. In this way, the scholar can play a critical role in positively developing the communities about which we care.

However, this seems far too passive for me.

I focus much of my research on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (specifically the Sherlock Holmes stories) and the many film, radio, theater, dance, and novel adaptations that have followed since 1887. For nearly 15 years, I have run a website devoted to this interest, and I have enjoyed interacting with very bright, opinionated fans who are excited and encouraged by me to tease out their reactions to any number of productions, including the original Doyle stories. As I advance my academic career, I see my role changing. I appreciate embracing the democracy that the internet affords us in terms of letting people voice their more-or-less researched work. However, I now see myself reaching a place of information augmenter. My education does not give me permission to act as the sole authority or arbitrator of “correct” readings, but my education does give me the opportunity to have read theorists and other obscure tomes that have likely escaped lay people.

For example, the latest season of Sherlock, the wildly successful BBC series, just aired in January 2017. Fans, as well as film and television critics, have flooded websites, blogs, and tumblr with a fair amount of generic whinging, but also many thoughtful, engaging pieces. What they lack, in general, are opportunities to better explain their frustration through relevant theories and theoretical frameworks that could even possibly offer recommendations for future productions. I see myself itching to include my work in the online prosaic canon of responses, perhaps in the form of a reworked version of a piece I hope to publish in a journal that no one will read. This holds true also for Sherlock Holmes fan communities (termed “scions”), in several of which I am a participant, where members routinely present papers. My challenge would be to recognize what theories or theorists may be esoteric and in need of properly straightforward explanation that an academic community may not require.

Comments

I agree with the point Gavin brought up from the Klein and Warner article stating, "pop-culture and media journalists, should be reaching out to scholars to help augment their work. In this way, the scholar can play a critical role in positively developing the communities about which we care. I do not think this is a passive way of engagement but a good way to "have a critical role in the communities about which we care." Though scholars are deeply interested in certain specialties and disciplines, in order to use the information they are gathering and researching it is imperative to engage with the commons, such as journalists, producers and others. A great way to engage in the physical is possibly professionally by sharing expertise. For example, if a screen writer is working on a film and needs deeper understanding on how/why representation matters and how to combat stereotypes and reach the audience which he is writing the film for, this would be a good opportunity for a scholar to provide expertise and have research to back up the expertise.

However, in situations where a scholar is not being called in as an expert or to share their expertise, I think they should engage normally. Being a scholar does allow for a person to be able to think more critically and with more research and facts to back up opinions, but that does not make a person more or less correct in their thoughts and opinions. So, in regards to engagement in online spaces/communities, such as social media or special interest websites, I think scholars are simply just participators just like the "commons". What I mean to say this is that scholars do not necessarily always augment or add more to conversations but are simply just engaging normally with normal people who may be more, less or equally educated as them. We are sharing our thoughts and opinions based on the information we know and others are simply doing the same.

When I think about the process of social engagement in shared communities of common interests, one of the main obstacles for the participants is determining when the engagement is warranted. Upon reading the statement, "If one of my primary objectives as a scholar-researcher is to offer meaningful analyses to the widest possible audience, I have a responsibility to make my work accessible, in terms of medium and in terms of readability." I agree that as a scholar there is a sort of responsibility to reach the masses and incorporate knowledgeable information that will augment the conversation/information being shared. However, the task then also falls on the scholar to determine when and on what platforms their expertise are required and/or needed. Furthermore, the scholar is then given the daunting task to convince the audience of their legitimacy and convince them that they are solely here to advance the conversation rather than combat others in order to produce a positive consequence.

I do believe that "the scholar can play a critical role in positively developing the communities about which we care," but only if the agenda of the scholar is welcomed into the community. I propose that because there is a strong shared interest, offering information to someone who doesn't comprehend or accept it, may have a counter effect and end up producing a negative outcome. On the contrary, my personal belief is that it would be beneficial for scholars to offer their expertise in group's of producers, writers, journalists, and less educated participators/the commons. I feel that it could ultimately lead to less unprecedented information and we could experience the unraveling of more fact based, research proven claims. However, being an avid user of social media platforms/interest based communities, I have noticed a sort of trend for the masses to be more opinion based driven than fact information seeking individuals. In conclusion, understanding what role should be played in the community in which one is interacting is key and roles could change depending on the audience.